Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree - 3

“That’s the last load,” said Viv, grunting as she lowered a stack of lumber to the floor. She shrugged her arm a few times and rubbed life back into her shoulder. “I’ve got to head over to the shop. You going to be all right for now?”

Fern glanced up from a set of shelves, a paintbrush heavy with wood stain in one paw. She fanned her cheek with the other. With the window glass in place, the interior of the shop was choked with midday heat. She blew out a breath and waved the brush. “Sure. With Cal here, there’s no possible way I can damage anything load-bearing.”

Viv searched her face.

She was smiling, but Fern thought she was also trying to figure out whether there was any lingering panic in the joke. The prognosis must have been good, because her smile deepened. “See you after I close up, then. But come on over if you need anything.”

In their letters, Viv had been clear that she would handle all the organizational work in advance of Fern’s arrival. She’d been true to her word, and if there was any consideration she hadn’t covered, Cal clearly knew what he was about. After a few days to give her bruised tail a chance to recover from the long carriage ride, Fern threw herself into transforming the shell of a building into a shop worth the upending of her entire life.

Watching her purse flatten also turned out to be a powerful motivator. Fern knew Viv would’ve been happy to assist there, too, but her old friend had already sunk plenty of sovereigns into the place. She couldn’t countenance letting her add any more.

“Front counter?” prompted Cal. The hob stared down at a few planks he’d arranged to mark the perimeter of the structure in question. Potroast snored between the boards in a makeshift bed consisting entirely of Fern’s cloak and his shed feathers.

Stretching—and wincing—Fern balanced the brush on the pot of wood stain and joined him. She regarded the rest of the shop’s interior, now crowded with shelves just like the ones she’d been finishing. “Hmm. A few feet this way, I think. It’ll have to be if we’re going to line up the bookshelves in three rows.” She closed an eye and framed the space with both paws.

Cal squatted to scratch Potroast behind one triangular ear. The gryphet snorted through his beak, rocking to the side to make his belly available. The hob obliged him, squinting up at Fern as he did. At least she was pretty sure he squinted. His eyes were mostly hidden by his bushy brows and the shadow of his cap. “So. You feelin’ more plumb these days?” He angled his other hand so it ran straight up and down.

Fern’s tail quirked in exasperation. “Honestly, everyone seems worried I might collapse in a heap at any moment.” She hiked a thumb in the direction Viv had gone. “The building isn’t going to fall down, and neither am I. We’re both just a little crooked.”

“Don’t doubt you’ll be fine a little crooked. But we’re already in here straightenin’ things out.” He stood and slapped the wall. “Just figured you deserved at least as much attention as this old wreck.”

She sighed. “Thanks. And I do mean that. But. This old wreck is just fine.”

“Hm.”

They contemplated one another for a long moment. Fern thought it was strange that she could in any way feel related to someone she’d barely said two words to, but the hob might as well have been an uncle, as far as that went. The kind you liked having by to visit, because they fixed all the squeaky doors, and they didn’t embarrass everybody at the dinner table.

“Fair enough,” Cal allowed. Then he pointed a gnarled finger at the shelf Fern had been laboring over. “S’pose since you’re just fine and all, it’d be worth pointin’ out that you’ve been fillin’ that brush so heavy, you’ve got a little lake formin’ on the bottom plank. Want me to show you how to do it proper?”

He had the good grace to cough to cover his chuckle when Fern turned the air blue.

As, of course, the best kind of uncle would.

Fern decided that the unending work of the following weeks had a therapeutic quality. She was too exhausted to fret about anything—funds, future, or friendship. Her new bookshop slowly took shape as the shelves found their places, fresh boards replaced rotted ones, wax gleamed on floorboards, paint refreshed the walls, and ancient stains vanished under lye and water.

Viv pitched in throughout any given day in dribs and drabs, especially when heavy objects needed shifting or someone more than four feet tall was required, but the balance of Fern’s hours was spent mostly in the company of Cal.

She discovered she didn’t mind that in the slightest.

The hob carpenter was soothing to be around, imperturbable and taciturn in ways that communicated more than they had any right to. More than once, one of them would appear unbidden next to the other to brace a piece of timber, offer a handful of nails, or top up a paint pot.

It wasn’t that they never spoke. They simply didn’t bother if they didn’t have to.

As someone whose life had mostly been spent in the service of sharing words, Fern was enjoying keeping them to herself for a while.

It meant that when they did speak, it actually mattered.

Mostly, that happened during their lunch break.

“Thanks, Thimble,” she said, as the little baker offered a platterful of sandwiches wrapped in brown paper, wedged next to two sugar-dusted scones.

He blushed to the ends of his whiskers, and then rummaged in a shoulder bag for a pair of flasks.

“Coffee,” he whispered, offering one to Cal.

The hob took it with a nod and a tug of his cap.

“Tea.” Thimble didn’t meet Fern’s eyes as she accepted it from his outstretched paw.

An awkward silence swelled as he fidgeted as though he wanted to say something, and Fern waited patiently.

And waited.

“Um. It looks delicious,” she tried, hefting the plate.

“Thanks,” he squeaked and fled out the open door.

Fern watched him go, then shifted her gaze to Cal, who was already inspecting the sandwiches with great interest. “I think there’s a conversation going on around here that involves me, but that I’m not part of. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“Hm?” replied Cal.

“Oh, come on. Every time that kid is in the room, I can feel the . . . the matchmaking eyes .” She studied the hob’s bushy brows. “All right, fine, I can’t really tell with you, but Viv? Tandri?”

Cal took a bite of sourdough and cheese and ruminated as he chewed. At last, he replied, “I figure folk who lucked into findin’ each other maybe hope it happens to somebody else, too. ’Specially somebody they’re fond of.”

“Oh, hells.” Fern dropped onto an upturned bucket with a sigh. “Those two aren’t talking me up to him, are they? Nudging him my way? Please, tell me they aren’t.”

He shrugged. “Doubt they’re that ham-fisted. Prob’ly just watchin’ you both like old ladies watchin’ young folk at a summer picnic.”

“He’s practically a baby! I’m forty-seven years old!”

“Never could tell the age of a rattkin, m’self.”

“My muzzle is silver .”

“Hm. Distinguished. ’Sides, he’s all gray.”

“I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me.”

Cal cocked half a smile and took another bite.

Fern laughed helplessly. “I hated the coffee, and now I’m going to disappoint them in a whole new way.” She selected a scone and took a morose bite. “Fuck, he is a good baker, though. Maybe I’m being too hasty.”

She felt the weight of the hob’s regard and met his gaze. Or where it would have been if his eyebrows didn’t obscure it.

“Hm. Yeah, the coffee thing was a real disaster.”

It turned out she did know when he was fucking with her.

“This is profoundly weird,” said Viv, hefting a volume in one hand and flipping it open with the other. She brought it halfway to her nose for a sniff. “Gods, I got a little shiver up my back. I expect to look outside and see a boardwalk and dunes.”

Fern looked up from the open crate before her, paws trailing over the cloth covers of the books stacked precisely inside. The ranks of shelves and freshly polished floors glowed mellowly under lantern light. The windowpanes fogged against an evening chill.

“My vision was a little sharper back then, but I can still picture you prying those crates open with your bare hands.”

Viv snorted. She’d wisely used a pry bar for the task this time around. “And I can still see Pitts towing them up on that cart of his. Whatever happened to him?”

“Still trooping around Murk, hauling and fixing what needs hauling and fixing.” Fern lifted three books from the crate, passing them over for Viv to shelve. A small smile. “And ambushing folks with a line or two of poetry when they least expect it.”

They stocked shelves in companionable silence while the little woodstove in the corner pushed the temperature toward the sleepy side of cozy.

Once they reached the bottom of the first crate, Viv snugged the pry bar under the lid of the next. “I remember Gallina making some sort of terrible excuse to get out of helping with this.”

“Said she was too short, as if that was a convincing argument.” Fern swept a paw to indicate her own height. “Whatever happened with you two?”

“We ran together for years, off and on. Then back in a group for a good stretch until . . . well, until I was done.”

Fern eyed her. “I’m sure she took it well,” she said, in a deliberately neutral way.

“Better than you’d think. She evened out in her old age, just like the rest of us.”

“Speak for yourself. I’m still salty as hells,” said Fern tartly. She blinked, and a slow smile crept across her lips. “And on the subject of relics, that reminds me . . .”

She scurried to her room and returned carrying a misshapen bundle wrapped in brown paper. Hoisting it triumphantly, she said, “Open it.”

Nonplussed, Viv took it and peeled back several layers of paper. “Are these what I think they are?”

She withdrew a wooden bookend, much battered.

“They are.”

“The seagull bookends,” murmured Viv.

“Or maybe rabbits.” They shared a glance and chuckled.

There was a pause during which Viv handed over the bookends, and Fern wedged a few novels between them on the countertop.

“I’ll be damned,” Viv breathed behind her.

“What?” Fern looked back sharply.

The orc reached into the freshly opened crate and withdrew a red volume. “Ten Links in the Chain,” she said, flashing a big, tusky grin. “This is the same book you tricked me into reading.”

“Tricked? That was honest saleswomanship, I’ll have you know.”

“I’m pretty sure you guilted me into it.”

“You did break my boardwalk,” Fern pointed out. “And then I gave it to you on credit, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about.”

“And now here you are,” said Viv.

The stove ticked and the shadows of moths flittered their way across the walls. “And now here I am,” she whispered. A surge of some desperate emotion halfway between despair and hope squeezed the breath out of her.

“You got me here,” said Viv solemnly.

That crushing sensation receded, mostly.

“It was you, more than anybody. You saved my life in a way I can’t properly put into words. I found . . .” Viv stared away and through the walls. Fern knew that if all the stones were peeled away, she’d find Tandri at the end of that gaze. “I found things I didn’t think were even possible.”

They looked at each other with the red book held like a remembrance between them.

“Well,” said Fern, with a comic shrug, “now I guess you have a chance to return the favor.”

“If you need saving, then that’s what we’re going to do,” said Viv. She shelved Ten Links in the Chain decisively.

She hadn’t meant to, but after discovering Viv’s change of fate, Fern had buried a call for help in that first letter she’d sent, and not particularly deep.

The lines still burned in her memory.

I’d love to say that my life has been perfect, that I’ve seized every moment, that after you left there were no struggles or doubts, but that wouldn’t be true. It has been satisfactory, though. There have been many good days.

Doing her best to chase any bitterness out of her laughter, Fern said, “You already did that once. Twice in a lifetime is asking too much.”

“I don’t see any reason to keep a tally if you don’t.” Viv regarded Fern with a gaze much more perceptive than it had been a few decades prior. Then she sniffed and scrubbed a forearm across her eyes. “Hells. Lot of dust in these crates. Let’s shelve some fucking books .”

“Let’s shelve some fucking books,” replied Fern, relieved.

Hours later, with the shelves stocked, and the crates hauled to the alley, they leaned side by side against the gleaming counter that Cal had built.

Fern felt . . . fine. Maybe even good.

Viv looked down at her from a familiar great height. “So, whatever happened to Satchel?”

Fern smiled wistfully at the thought of the surpassingly polite homunculus made of bone and blue fire.

“Gods, I wish I knew. But I like to think he saw all the things he wanted to.”

In the end, Fern named the shop Thistleburr Booksellers in honor of the place her father had built and raised her in, what seemed a thousand leagues to the west and as many years ago. Besides, she couldn’t think of a better name that fit, and it was . . . comfortable.

As Viv pointed out, there wasn’t likely to be any confusion.

Cal had chiseled the letters deep in a broad oak plank and carved the edges into fancy scallops. Fern had painted the name white with a small brush and a careful hand. Viv had barely stretched to peg it above the freshly scrubbed entryway.

It was the last thing slotted into place before opening day arrived.

Fern stood just inside the door with a single paw resting on the handle. She closed her eyes, drew a deep breath, and held it.

The shelves were stocked. The appointments sparkled. The spice of ink and paper enticed.

A veritable tower of Thimble’s baked treats steamed and gleamed atop a round table in the center of the shop, beside carafes of coffee and tea and clusters of mugs.

Tandri’s chalk artwork proclaimed Opening Day Sale, 5 bits off! from a sandwich board. Fern was reminded of a similar effort by Satchel many years past, rendered in his precise, mathematical hand.

The echoes of that event swelled inside her, painting the inside of her lids until she half believed she’d open them to find herself twenty summers younger and staring into the homunculus’s blazing blue eyes.

Then a warm hand fell on Fern’s shoulder, heavy and strong, to deliver a gentle squeeze. “It’s going to be fine,” said Viv. “Better than.”

Breathing out, Fern glanced up with a smile. “I’ve owned a bookstore for twenty-five years. I should be used to a feeling of impending disaster by now, right?”

“Twenty-five years, and no disaster yet. Doesn’t seem like a real reliable feeling, does it?” Viv returned the smile.

Fern blinked. “That’s an annoyingly logical observation.”

They both started at a sudden rap on the door, and after an embarrassing series of fumbles with the latch, Fern pushed it open a few inches.

Tandri’s face greeted them as she waited in the dawn light, wearing a soft sweater and stamping her booted feet against the early morning chill. “All set?” Then she glanced to her left.

Fern swung the door wider, revealing four townsfolk waiting on the step beside Viv’s wife.

A coil of tension released inside the rattkin.

“Gods, get in here out of the cold! I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.”

And from then on, scarcely a pause could be found.

Fern remembered the day as a series of little landmarks, like treetops rising from a misty valley.

Viv, waving Ten Links in the Chain at a bewildered dwarf, covering one eye with a hand and loudly describing a dismemberment. The dwarf bought the book, but he had a hunted look in his eyes when he did. Viv winked at Fern over the top of his head.

Thimble, squeaking in dismay at platters empty of all but crumbs and rushing to refresh them with steaming cinnamon rolls, the scent of which caused an audible ripple amongst shoppers.

The startling appearance of a shaggy gray cat the size of a timber wolf that nobody remarked upon . Its tail crested the tops of the shelves like the fin of a shark roving shallow waters as it prowled the shop with an air of menacing indifference.

The arrival of a venerable woman in a red cloak, accompanied by a stone-fey in a very impressive hat, whose combined presence had an effect that Fern honestly thought the cat should have produced. The lady bought a stack of books two feet high, but not before sharply inspecting Fern with a flinty eye. Her escort carried her purchases for her when she left.

Tandri nudging Fern aside to take over the counter so she could eat a hasty sandwich, which Potroast ogled mercilessly until he received his half.

Cal ambling in the door and stepping to the side to lean against the wall, hands in his pockets. He nodded when he caught her eye, smiling his stubbled smile.

The steady accumulation of copper bits and silvers in the cash-box, and the impression of some great, impending wave curling back into the tide before ever breaking on the shore.

And with the closing of the door, the weary, bewildered, dazed, exhausted, triumphant, satisfied silence that followed, as Viv, Tandri, Cal, and Thimble clustered around the countertop, noting the many fresh gaps amongst the bookshelves.

The opening of Thistleburr Booksellers in Thune was an unmitigated success. A new chapter freshly opened in Fern’s life—the page turned, the title printed, and ready to be filled with words of renewal, purpose, and peace.